12 Reasons to Hire a Professional Photographer

1. Training: As the photography field keeps evolving, you want to ensure that your photographer never stops learning. Inquire about the photographer’s certifications and continuing education efforts. Our photographers are trained on current trends and ever changing needs of the future promotional and marketing efforts. (Christie’s Advantages)
2. Experience: A photographer with many years of experience within the sports, fashion, portrait or any other non-corporate photography branches is not necessarily the ideal fit for the meeting and event industry. Ensure that your photographer has relevant experience to the task at hand. We here at Christie’s hire and train specialists only but empower all of our photographers to shoot outside our niche market as well to gain insights and best practices to be utilized back in our world. Whether the event calls for an Entertainer personality type or an inconspicuous documentarian, our photographers are adept at reading the room.
3. Customer Service: Are you treated as a valued partner or simply as customer? We custom tailor our pricing and our packages to suit your needs. Our clients can approach us with any request and we will work our hardest to achieve their goals. Our photographers on-site are a clear extension of us and as such act and behave as an extension of your company and brand.
4. Industry Recognition/Reputation: Research your potential photographer’s industry involvement. We are a member of numerous Industry Associations such as ILEA, MPI, NACE, IAEE, CSAE, SITE and we absolutely adore the meeting industry.
5. Professional Appearance: Would you hire a photographer with a fashion statement appearance for your award gala? First impressions are crucial and our photographers dress event appropriate. Suit and tie for galas and award nights, dress shirt, dress pants and tie for any professional meeting and khakis and polos for incentive trips and golf outings.
6. Professional Equipment: A true professional does not utilize consumer equipment. In the realms of photography you are as good as the weakest link in your equipment chain. From professional DSLRs, high-speed memory cards, specialized selection of lenses, high-grade tripods and mono-pods, photo filters to carrying bags, our photographers know that good image quality is worth investing in.
7. Back up Equipment: Does your photographer come prepared with a contingency plan for the worst case scenario? All of our photographers carry a backup of every piece of equipment needed to execute the job properly.
8. Liability Insurance: Christie’s maintains full liability coverage for our photographers. At the majority of our regularly staffed venues, our certificate of insurance is already on file. When we are working at your event, you don’t have to worry about insurance.
9. On Call: Last minute changes are inevitable. If the VIP is arriving early the next morning for the shoot and you are reading the e-mail at 11PM, you need to make sure you can reach your photographer. This is why we offer 24/7 availability. Our record time for the new client phone call to arriving on-site is 24 minutes.
10. Reliability: When, as the client, you have a relationship with your photographer, and you trust their expertise, value their skill-set, appreciate the service and experience the partnership you can rely on them no matter how chaotic your event gets or how impromptu certain request are.
11. Image rights: Imagine having to put a press release ASAP and the photo from last years conference needs to be used. Before you can utilize it you must ask for a permission from your photographer. As a partner we are an extension of your brand and you own all the rights to all of the images taken.
12. Image backups: What if your hard drive crashes and you lose all of the images from last months conference. What if you need to reference a conference from 3 years ago but can not locate the files? As a partner we securely keep all of the photos as a backup for these instances only.

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